Thursday, September 18, 2008

If you haven't read all of my coverage of the Dawgs this week, you can still find it in the archives at Macon.com or Ledger-Enquirer.com. Here's a quick rundown of the stuff that didn't make it into the paper or onto the blog...

Richt on preparation for traveling to Arizona State: "I don't know much about jet lag or how long you've got to be gone to get jet lag or how many hours difference it is. But I think if we just roll in there and do our normal routine, our goal is to get in there, go to the hotel, have dinner, meet with the players like we always do go to bed. We'll meet again, have a chapel if they want to go, I'll speak to them for 10, 15 minutes, we'll jump on the bus, get our pads on, warm up and play. We're not going to change our routine at all. I'm hoping just the routine of the trip will be where it's pretty seamless."

Richt on if anyone on the team was flying for the first time: "There might be a few first-time flyers. You never think about it as a coach much, but I can remember one time at Florida State, I can't remember who the kid was, but he was like, he did not want to get on that airplane. It was the first flight of the year, and they said we had to get off the plane for some kind of mechanical issue, and he's like, Coach, can I please go in the van with the managers because I do not want to fly.' We finally got him on the plane. But that'll be interesting."Richt on playing a team from the other side of the country: "I've taken that kind of trip for a bowl game when you're there for a long time, but to fly in and fly out, I can't remember. I guess as a player, we went to Colorado. The very first game of the year was at Colorado, and we lost 14-7 or something like that. I'm trying to think, even at Florida State, if we made a trip like that. I think we played Brigham Young in a classic at Anaheim, but even then I think we stayed a day or two longer than we normally would. I hope it's not a big deal. I'm trying not to make it a big deal."

Richt on how the offensive line has reacted to the shakeups: "If you get benched and you don't get to play, that's pretty devastating. If another guy wins the starting job, but you still know you're going to rotate and play, you have an opportunity to redeem yourself or an opportunity to contribute to the victory. It's not good, it never feels good to be demoted, but if you're still playing, they know they'd better get their mind on their business. Mostly I think it's just been trying to survive Coach Searels most of the day. They're just trying like mad to practice as good as they can. Coach is demanding, he's all over them, and they're trying to do the best they can do."

Richt on Kiante Tripp's injury: "You might survive it one game, but if you have to go the rest of the season with a guy out like that, that would have been tough. But he'll be fine. I thought he practiced pretty good. Even in the green, doing some drills on the side, I thought he looked pretty good."

Richt on blitzing Rudy Carpenter: "So far we've had more success getting to the quarterback blitzing. But you've got to study the quarterback you play, too, and we've already studied Rudy pretty good. Rudy's outstanding. His pass percentage went up when people were blitzing because he knows what to do. He knows how to get rid of it quickly and people are more vulnerable when you blitz. There's less people in coverage. It's just simple math. The more people you rush, the less you have to cover, and if you have a quarterback that can handle that in a system that he understands extremely well, blitzing might be the worst thing you can do. Especially this guy, you've got to have a great mix of zone concepts with blitzing, zone concepts with four-man rush, man concepts with four-man rush and man concepts bringing the heat, and you've got to try to make them all look as close to the same as you can."Richt on the struggles of the defensive ends: "When you miss a lot of work, it's tough to be in midseason form. Lomax missed a lot. Dobbs missed a lot. We were grabbing Corvey Irvin and Brandon Wood just to practice."

Richt on the travel schedule: "We really didn't think it would be worth it. I really didn't want to miss class, I didn't want to go out there and just be bored or too anxious by the time we go out and play. I thought just trying to stay in our normal away-game rhythm would be in the best interest of the team. We will be in the mentality of preparing for an 8 p.m. ballgame. I think we will keep our biological clocks and our actual clocks, we might just stay on Eastern Standard time the entire time as far as our hotel clocks our own personal clocks."

Richt on playing so many wide receivers: "The bottom line is if the guy is ready to play and performing well we will let him play. The start of the season with the weather as hot as it has been, if you decide to run your top two wide receivers ragged, just run them in there every single play, they wouldn't make it. That's not a comment on their conditioning. They might take the risk of pulling a muscle. When I say give A.J. more opportunities, yeah. But you know that going into that game, you got a young guy in the first game in his home state, you never knew what kind of extra excitement or emotion would be there and sometimes guys struggle with those kinds of things. You could tell early on he was not going to struggle. We did throw more balls at him, we just didn't catch them, the protection got blown up or we didn't put the ball in a position where he could get to them. Like I have said, there aren't many pass plays that you say go to one guy no matter what. They line up in double coverage then you can force it in if you want."

Richt on Israel Troupe: "He has come along very well. He has caught every ball thrown to him. He has tried to block extremely hard. He knows what to do. He is 212 pounds, he had a good offseason of weightlifting. He is a redshirt freshman, and he has earned some playing time."

Richt on Dannell Ellerbe's lack of stats so far: "The first two games were spread systems, a lot of balls to the outside, and the perimeters were getting the tackles. The inside linebackers aren't getting as many whacks at it. I think it is more of a scheme issue than anything else. He played bigger this game, I thought. We were playing more of a traditional team more apt to run the ball. In the I formation and some of the hard zone plays under center where the linebackers need to sneak in and make the hits."

Richt on Rennie Curran: "Rennie is playing great. Rennie has already been voted team captain twice by our staff. It is amazing to watch him play because when a play goes laterally and there is a flow of bodies over there all of a sudden you just see a little dart. He just gets there faster than everybody else. He tends to take the right angle to get there. People say some guys have a nose for the ball and he does. I guess that is the best way to describe it."

Richt on Brian Mimbs: "He had an earlier kick he didn't think was that big of a deal. It was a 41-yarder that had 5.0 hang time. He came off and said, I got under that thing, I didn't kick it that far.' I am like, Son, I don't care if you kicked it 38 yards or 36 yards, with that kind of hang time and no chance for a return, I would be happy if you do that every time.' I said, 'I will never get mad if you kick it a little bit short and high.' I may not like it if you drive it. You may kick long and flat, but then you've got some coverage issues. You've got great return men out there with a lot of space, that's where we get in trouble. I am encouraging him to kick it high and get that hang time."

Knowshon Moreno on the team's play last week: "South Carolina's a great team. We knew that going into it, and you saw that on Saturday. I thought we did a great job coming out with a win, and we did what we had to do to get that."

Logan Gray on the uncertainty at punt returner: "It definitely keeps you on your toes. You've got to be ready because you don't know if you're going in there or not. It might be an advantage to us because the other team doesn't know what they're going to get back there. We've got a lot of different type guys catching punts. It definitely keeps you awake during the game."

Chris Davis on the play of the offensive line against South Carolina: "I was encouraged when I watched the film because it said 14-7 Georgia on the scoreboard. We won, so that was encouraging. We did all right. We opened some holes. There was a time or two where a guy fell off a block, but that's going to happen in a game. We obviously did well enough to win, which is the main focus."

Matthew Stafford on how Arizona State differs from teams in the SEC: "I think their style of play is a little bit different. They don't press man as much. They're not as in your face like a lot of players are in the SEC, grabbing and holding on to guys. It's more trying to run with them and make plays on the ball. It's just a different style."Willie Martinez on stopping the run: "That's where you've really got to concentrate. Most games are won defending the run. Last year, we gave up 140 yards and 4 yards per carry against South Carolina, and to us, we thought that was the difference."

Martinez on getting more sacks: "We want better, there's no doubt about it. It's tough to put it on just defensive ends. It's really our defense. We might not have a lot of sacks, but are we hurrying the quarterback up? Are we hitting the quarterback legally? Is he making poor decisions? The Central Michigan quarterback threw about four passes away that were questionable intentional grounding just because he was trying to avoid the sack."Jon Fabris on the progress of Justin Houston: "He's a redshirt freshman, and if Rod (Battle) wasn't out and if Michael Lemon was still with us, how much playing time would Justin be getting? But a lot of it is you don't people thinking too much where you have a paralysis by analysis. Sometimes you see the light bulb come on, and then it goes out. Then it stays on a little bit longer, and you get excited because they're starting to get the idea. Every time you have a little success, it's a confidence builder."

Fabris on the Pac-10: "It's been 22 years since I coached in the Pac-10. I've always believed, and I can say it because I've coached in the ACC, the Big 12, the Pac-10, but it goes in cycles. I've seen years where the Pac-10 can hold its own against anybody or the Big 12. I think year in and year out, the SEC certainly is a tough league. But you go out there, there are a lot of teams you don't want to play out there either. They've got athletes, they're well coached, they have sophisticated offenses and defenses. It may not be the same fervor fan base, the fanaticism that way. It's more of an entertainment thing, people like to go to the games to be entertained. It's not year round where all we want to hear about is recruiting. But that doesn't mean they're not coached and they're not good athletes."

Jeremy Lomax on trying to replace Marcus Howard: "I'm putting pressure on myself, and maybe that's not a good thing. I react good under pressure, but you're not going to be the next person. You can only be you. What you produce is what you produce. Perfect example is Quentin Moses' junior season to his senior season."

Lomax on the DEs' development: "Against South Carolina there were spurts. There were spurts last year in the Sugar Bowl. Everybody in that game had pressure, everybody looked great. It's a mind-set. That game, we knew what we were going to do. We had it in our minds that we were going to dominate, and that's what we did. We're just trying to get that mind-set again."

Asher Allen on how the DBs deal with the lack of pressure from the defensive line: "As a secondary alone, we would say it doesn't matter. We should be able to cover for 12 seconds if needed. I think that kind of attitude will pay a lot of dividends for us. But we need to finish. I think we finished when Reshad had the pick on the last play. I think our secondary as a whole had some good plays. I think we made plays when we needed to, but you've just got to get better. Capitalizing on opportunities, I think we've got to do a better job with that."

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Seth Emerson has been covering the SEC and Georgia (on and off) since 2002. He worked at the Albany Herald from 2002-05, then spent five years at The State in Columbia, S.C., covering South Carolina. He returned to Athens in August of 2010, only to find that David Pollack and David Greene were no longer playing for the Bulldogs. Adjustments were made. Emerson is originally from Silver Spring, Md., and graduated from Maryland in 1998 with a degree in journalism and a minor in getting lost on the way to practically everywhere. Then he spent four years at The Washington Post, covering small colleges, a couple NCAA basketball tournaments, and on one glorious day, was yelled at by Tony Kornheiser. It was probably at The Post that he also learned to write in the third person.These days he lives in Athens with his beloved and somewhat wimpy dog, Archie. Together they fight crime at night in northeast Georgia, except on nights there is no crime, in which case they sit at home, sip on white wine and watch reruns of "Mad Men."